professor clinehttp://www.readthehook.com/taxonomy/term/3853/all
enStonewall lost: Pictures recall burned Natural Bridge mansionhttp://www.readthehook.com/104017/stonewall-lost-pictures-recall-burned-natural-bridge-mansion
<p><em>O turn thy rudder hither-ward awhile</em>,<br /><em>Here may thy storme-bett vessel safely ryde;</em><br /><em>This is the port of rest from troublous toyle,</em><br /><em>The world's sweet inn, from pain &amp; wearisome turmoyle.</em><br />&#8211;lost carving above the fireplace at Stonewall Lodge</p>
<p>Shortly after last week's <em>Hook</em> was going to press, with its tale of a roadside attraction-destroying inferno, we received a folder containing images showing how the demolished Haunted Monster Museum appeared during much of the 20th Century when it was a gracious mansion and lodge.</p>
<div class="sidebar">
<h2>Last week:</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.readthehook.com/103993/burning-roadside-can-mark-cline-rise-again-ashes">Burning roadside: Can Mark Cline rise again from the ashes?</a></p>
</div>
<p>The pictures sent by Ann Gill recall a stunning structure, a Queen Anne Victorian built of gray rusticated limestone and nestled mere footsteps from another dazzling work of stone, Natural Bridge, one of the so-called Seven Wonders of the Natural World.</p>
<p>Gill, the granddaughter of the last individual owner, says that her late grandmother told her that the building was originally a residence, a wedding present from a man to his bride around the turn of the 20th Century. Gill says her grandparents operated it during their ownership, which lasted from the mid-'30s to the mid-'50s, as an inn called the Stonewall Lodge.</p>
<p>Besides an unusually modern wall of glass facing a backyard forest, the old house featured a unique feature in the form of a stanza from an old poem inscribed in marble and set into the fireplace mantel. Despite the inscription's promise that this would be a "port of rest," the owners of Natural Bridge let the place decay. The lawn became a scrub forest, and the mansion fell prey to decades of disuse and vandalism.</p>
<p>The era of neglect ended in 2002 when a plucky Barnum of the Blue Ridge, a fiberglass artist of wacky roadside attractions, turned it into a haunted house. As reported last week, Mark Cline&#8211; or "Professor Cline," as he's known in the roadside world&#8211; parlayed the house's crumbling grandeur into a weird world of horrors. But Cline's decade of mirthful terror came to a sickening halt in the early evening of April 16 when a fire of unknown origin consumed the structure, taking with it countless fiberglass figures from the playfully twisted mind of Cline.</p>
<p>To Gill, who lives in Kilmarnock, the destruction came as a shock.</p>
<p>"It just made us all so ill to hear about that fire," says Gill. "My sister says her childhood was squished."</p>
<p>Now 64, Gill recalls several visits to see her grandparents there as a little girl in the 1950s, and she still keeps the 1948 letter that answered one of the mysteries of the mansion. On stationery from New York's upscale University Club, the correspondent informs Gill's grandmother the source of the quotation over the fireplace.</p>
<p>The passage comes form "The Faerie Queene," an epic poem written in the 16th Century by Edmund Spenser. In the days before a few internet keystrokes could render the answer, the letter's author reveals "a great deal of pleasure" in providing the information. Unfortunately, at some point during the years before Professor Cline haunted the place, the inscribed stone was removed from the building.</p>
<p>Gill crossed the state a few years ago to see the old place for what turned out to be the last time. She says she found the Haunted Monster Museum too terrifying and had to flee through the "chicken door." Afterwards, however, she introduced herself, and Cline allowed her to stroll through the house where she'd played as a child&#8211; with the lights on.</p>
<p>Those who toured Cline's Haunted Monster Museum, enveloped by trees which hid an array of dinosaurs and other human-gobbling figures, might be surprised to learn that the front forest was once a rolling lawn. Several small cottages and a low stone retaining wall&#8211; the latter of which may have inspired the name her grandparents bestowed&#8211; were once part of the complex but all long gone before the fire. These features are visible in the photos from Gill's archive, along with the dramatic interior staircase and the expansive verandas that gave a view toward the mountains beyond the natural wonder.</p>
<p>"Believe me," says Gill, "It was an awesome place."</p>
http://www.readthehook.com/104017/stonewall-lost-pictures-recall-burned-natural-bridge-mansion#comments_BreakingNewsFeaturedprofessor clineNewsThu, 24 May 2012 18:57:26 +0000hawes104017 at http://www.readthehook.comBurning roadside: Can Mark Cline rise again from the ashes?http://www.readthehook.com/103993/burning-roadside-can-mark-cline-rise-again-ashes
<p>Just as the tourist season was about to begin, one of Virginia's most trip-worthy attractions has been destroyed by fire, a rude turn for the one-man whirling dervish whose creativity, for 30 years, has kept the tiny town of Natural Bridge on the map of summer fun.</p>
<div class="sidebar">
<h2>Related stories:</h2>
<p>• <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/100987/can-professor-cline-save-taubman">Can Professor Cline save the Taubman?</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/100745/wboro-outage-911-memorial-goes-awry">W'boro spectacle: After sparks, Cline memorial sparkles</a></p>
<p>• <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/files/old/stories/2004/07/22/coverDinomightprofessorCli.html">Dino-might: A Blue Ridge Barnum revives the American roadside</a></p>
</div>
<p>A mid-April blaze demolished the Victorian-era mansion that served as the <a href="http://www.monstersanddinosaurs.com/">Haunted Monster Museum</a> as well as the centerpiece of a bizzaro place called Dinosaur World where dinos would gobble Union soldiers and where brave visitors could also hunt Bigfoot with a "redneck." But the fire means no attractions this summer from Mark "Professor" Cline.
</p>
<p>"We're gonna take a break this year," says Cline. "I just need more time to regroup."</p>
<p>Although the fiberglass dinos in the woods outside were saved, the Monster Museum was incinerated. The mechanical rats, the "Elvis-stein" monster, and the mighty fiberglass python that seemed to slither in and out of the second-story gable windows all went up in flames late on the afternoon of April 16.</p>
<p>During a next-day visit, the ruins are still smoldering when a State Police investigator shoos a reporter from the scene.</p>
<p>"This is Natural Bridge property," barks the officer, as Cline ushers the visitor away from the charred house.</p>
<p>"He was my dragon," laughs Cline, recalling the era when the future officer was a teenager piloting not a Crown Victoria but a lawn tractor and sporting a character costume at Cline's last attraction, the Enchanted Castle. In a still-unsolved 2001 fire, a blaze whose investigation (or lack thereof, as he alleges) still makes Cline bristle with anger, the Enchanted Castle went up in flames.</p>
<p>"I'd much rather have Barney Fife and Inspector Clousseau out here," says Cline, recalling how State Police investigators conducted interviews hinting that Cline himself had torched the Enchanted Castle, despite the fact that the Castle was uninsured, and that he lost his office, his studio, and all the irreplaceable 8-millimeter films he made as a boy.</p>
<p>"We've done a pile of work on that case," says George "Stick" Austin, the State Police captain overseeing that investigation, noting that it's standard procedure to interview owners. "It is still considered an active investigation."</p>
<p>As for the recent fire, it was an otherwise uneventful spring afternoon when Cline says he was on the grounds of his studio, where&#8211; with a small crew&#8211; he <a href="http://www.enchantedcastlestudios.com/">manufactures fiberglass figures</a> for America's roadside playgrounds.</p>
<p>"I got a call at about 5:45 from the assistant general manager of Natural Bridge," says Cline. "I dropped everything and ran outside."</p>
<p>Cline pauses, looking mournfully down the highway in the direction of the smouldering ruins.</p>
<p>"I looked up and saw a plume of thick black smoke," he says, "and I knew immediately it was gone."</p>
<p>By the time Cline could speed the three miles south on Lee Highway, what may have started as a minor blaze on a stage at one end of the structure had become an engulfing inferno. Cline snapped a few photographs as the mansion cooked.</p>
<p>At the time of a reporter's visit 24 hours later, all that's left are a trio of chimneys and the front wall, executed in a rusticated gray limestone.</p>
<p>To 64-year-old Kilmarnock resident Ann Gill, whose grandparents owned and operated the structure as a hotel/antique shop called "Stonewall Lodge," it's a crushing blow.</p>
<p>"It was a romantic old home," says Gill. "My mother was married there."</p>
<p>In the years after Gill's family sold the structure in the 1950s, the Natural Bridge company eventually let the place go to seed, and by the 1980s the expansive front lawn had reverted to forest.</p>
<p>Cline says the abandoned house seemed creepy when, a decade ago, he approached the owner, Natural Bridge LLC, with his plan to haunt it. In 2002, he unveiled his Haunted Monster Museum there. Two years later, as an April Fool's prank, he built a full-size replica of Stonehenge called Foamhenge about a mile away.</p>
<p>The past two decades have been a tough time on traditional road-trip destinations. While Natural Bridge keeps attendance figures under wraps, educational places like Monticello and Colonial Williamsburg reveal numbers that have fallen from their peaks in the pre-Internet, pre-water-park era.</p>
<p>The venerable Homestead Resort just announced plans to put in a water park. Massanutten installed its water park in 2005.</p>
<p>As some may recall, there was a proposal in Charlottesville 20 years ago to give land to a steam train operator. But that was at least five hotels ago, before the Downtown Mall and myriad wineries erupted with enough critical mass to fill all the new lodgings.</p>
<p>Despite having what's been billed as the Seventh Wonder of the natural world, Natural Bridge has had no such luck. The town's newest hotel appears at least 50 years old. A pair of zoos, a cave, a wax museum, an Indian village, and a new indoor butterfly garden helped draw families off the Interstate, but it was Cline's humor/horror compound that drew national attention from roadside enthusiasts.</p>
<p>"It was a nice addition to our attractions and particularly popular with kids," says Natural Bridge general manager Debbie Land. "It's a total loss as they say in the insurance world."</p>
<p>It's a great loss to Kay Lera. A retiree from the San Francisco Bay Area who for nine years ran a B&amp;B in her new hometown of Lexington, Lera notes how one man can make a difference.</p>
<p>"Natural Bridge has the beauty of the bridge and the caverns," says Lera, "but having some wacky humor incorporated into the scenario does make it a family destination."</p>
<p>So strong is the pull of Professor Cline that when an unassuming adult walks into the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke to ask what the Museum has to offer, the first words out of the front desk lady's mouth are these: "Well, Professor Cline is gone…"</p>
<p>We didn't even ask about Professor Cline, whose exhibition there had closed a couple of weeks earlier. But when a man hangs a fiberglass King Kong on the side of your museum and breaks attendance records with such twisted figures as the "Franken-chicken," people take notice.</p>
<p>Like the rest of us, Cline says he's now trying to face the prospect of a summer without his Monster Museum. He's seen an uptick in contract work, like the 13 men's room sinks he recently built for the Broadway revival of <em>How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying</em>. A couple of reality show producers have made inquiries about following him around.</p>
<p>Cline veers between "pissed off" anger at an unknown arsonist and the peace of knowing that nobody was killed or injured in the fire.</p>
<p>"We made a lot of magic there," says Cline, mulling the impermanence of his creations. "Even one day the great Pyramids of Egypt will be just dust in the wind. This might just be one of those messages from the universe saying it's time to move on."</p>
http://www.readthehook.com/103993/burning-roadside-can-mark-cline-rise-again-ashes#comments_BreakingNewsFeaturedNatural Bridgeprofessor clineCover StoriesTue, 22 May 2012 14:24:00 +0000hawes103993 at http://www.readthehook.comCan Professor Cline save the Taubman?http://www.readthehook.com/100987/can-professor-cline-save-taubman
<p>Roanoke's futuristic-looking Taubman museum isn't meeting attendance projections, so they've brought in the ever-colorful "Professor" Mark Cline, of <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/files/old/stories/2004/07/22/coverDinomightprofessorCli.html">dinosaur-and-Foamhenge</a> (and more recently of <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/100745/wboro-outage-911-memorial-goes-awry">9/11 Tribute</a>) fame. The front page of the <em>Wall Street Journal</em> has <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903703604576584583050203682.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_5">the story</a>.</p>
http://www.readthehook.com/100987/can-professor-cline-save-taubman#comments_BreakingNewsFeaturedPeopleprofessor clineNewsThu, 22 Sep 2011 17:10:59 +0000hawes100987 at http://www.readthehook.comW'boro spectacle: After sparks, Cline memorial sparkleshttp://www.readthehook.com/100745/wboro-outage-911-memorial-goes-awry
<p>The installation of a dramatic memorial to 9/11 caused a spectacle of its own Friday afternoon after a support cable touched a live power line, sending up sparks and plunging several businesses in downtown Waynesboro into darkness.</p>
<p>"We're all a little bit shaken up," said Mark Cline, the Natural Bridge-based showman who planned the memorial. "We're just lucky that no one was touching the cable."</p>
<p>According to witnesses, the incident occurred around 1:45pm as a team was hoisting four soft plastic panels to cover one face of a former cold storage building. <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/100568/commemorations-planned-tenth-anniversary-911">The idea</a> was to create a representation of the twin towers of the World Trade Center with patriotic images of a flag and eagle in the background.</p>
<p>While power was restored in about an hour to the nearby Kroger grocery and other businesses along Arch Avenue, the fate of the memorial was uncertain at the original time of this posting. Cline, aka "Professor Cline," has been working on the project for a recently-assembled group called 9/11 Tribute.</p>
<p>The incident created a harrowing moment for Scott Balsley. A childhood friend of Cline's, he took a day off work&#8211; his birthday&#8211; to help raise the tribute. He and Cline were harnessed and hauling up panels at the roof's edge when wind caught a panel "like a parasail," says Balsley.</p>
<p>He says he saw the flash of electricity churning through one of the aircraft-grade cables that was supposed to hold the panels in place but which ended up connecting itself, via unwelcome electricity, to an iron pipe atop the building.</p>
<p>"It arced right behind my foot and then welded right behind me," says Balsley. "It was quite entertaining."</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>On Sunday, however, Cline assembled a new team of installers who sent the 90-foot-tall vinyl panels soaring up the eight-story building under sunny but somewhat windy skies.</p>
<p>"It looked gorgeous this morning," said Caren Brosi, a classmate of Cline's in the Waynesboro class of 1979. "Very clever."</p>
<p>After erecting another 9/11 memorial in Buena Vista five years ago, Cline says he got the idea for this one while chatting with a friend in the parking lot of the nearby Kroger grocery store and noticing that the mostly-windowless brick building had a pair of bump-outs&#8211; one a stairway and the other an elevator shaft.</p>
<p>While various gaps in the building were allowing wind to billow the lightweight material, Cline said that "even with it flapping like that it looks good." He wasn't alone in appreciating the spectacle.</p>
<p>"You are amazing," said a man driving by in a Jeep. "Thank you for everything you do," said a woman in the Jeep's passenger seat.</p>
<p>Later on Sunday, the display became the backdrop for a nighttime ceremony on the eve of America's greatest act of domestic terrorism. And Cline says he's thankful to his wife, Sherry, who helped assemble the panels and to the donors who put up about $10,000 to make the memorial possible.</p>
<p>Cline said that in the interest of safety and to avoid a solemn memorial turning into a kitchy tourist attraction, the display needed to come down before the originally planned 30 days.</p>
<p>"We really just wanted to have it up for this day anyway," he said. "We learned how not to put up giant tarps that first day."</p>
<p>&#8211;<em>update added Monday, September 12 at 6:43pm</em><br />&#8211;<em>Original headline: W'boro outage: 9/11 memorial goes awry</em></p>
http://www.readthehook.com/100745/wboro-outage-911-memorial-goes-awry#comments_BreakingNewsFeaturedCommunityprofessor clineNewsFri, 09 Sep 2011 20:57:32 +0000hawes100745 at http://www.readthehook.comWhatever happened? 10 updated storieshttp://www.readthehook.com/98505/whatever-happened-10-updated-stories
<h4><a class="colorbox" href="/files/images/field_images/COVER_1026.jpg"><img class="imagecache-200px_wide" src="http://www.readthehook.com/files/imagecache/200px_wide/images/field_images/COVER_1026.jpg" /></a>Whatever happened after authorities slew the geese in Forest Lakes? Whatever happened to Oliver Kuttner's remarkably light car? What's the latest on the search for Morgan Harrington's killer? This week, we look back at ten classic cover stories&#8211; dramatic tales, poignant remembrances, investigative reports, and colorful profiles&#8211; to learn the very latest.&#8211;<em>Hawes Spencer, editor</em></h4>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>Historic decision: Tax credit case stalls School rehab</strong></h3>
<p><strong>&nbsp;</strong>When the <em>Hook</em> <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/86344/cover-jefferson-school-giveaway-can-charlottesville-get-it-right-time">checked in a year ago</a> on the project to rehabilitate a&nbsp; historic-yet-decrepit African-American school into a community and cultural heritage center, plans were drawn, tenants lined up, and the project was just waiting on a loan. Despite almost $6 million in city funding, the private partnership in charge of the renovation said there was one other essential: historic tax credits.<br /><br />In March, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit threw a wrench into that plan. Until now, Virginia's credits have been handed out to virtually any rehab deemed historic, but the Court is now declaring them taxable income to the investors who receive them.<br /><br /><span class="fid14497 imagecache-300px_wide"><img title="The Jefferson School was counting on historic tax credits. " src="http://www.readthehook.com/files/imagecache/300px_wide/images/field_images/cover-architectural-futurex.jpg" /><span class="caption">The Jefferson School was counting on historic tax credits.
</span></span> "It threw the entire Virginia tax credit world into a tizzy," says Frank Stoner, one of the citizens on the Jefferson School Community Partnership LLLC, which will own the school, and co-founder of <a href="http://www.milestonepartners.co/about/home.php">Milestone Partners LLC</a>, which will renovate the aging educational building. The $17 million project anticipated collecting nearly $5 million in tax credits.<br /><br />The court ruling said investors looking to slice their tax bills on such projects didn't really share any risk and their their purchase of the credits was a "disguised sale," subject to federal income tax. The decision could also leave the Jefferson School partnership liable for a huge tax bill, says Stoner.<br /><br />"We're modifying the tax credit structure," says Stoner. The lender wanted to make sure the group had funding to pay the tax bill, "because no one is quite sure how this is going to go with the court ruling." <br /><br />Once the building is renovated, the partnership plans to lease Carver Recreation Center back to the city and has other nonprofit tenants lined up like Piedmont Virginia Community College and Jefferson Area Board for Aging. An African-American Heritage Center takes 9,000 square feet for a museum and community center.<br /><br />"We should close in a few weeks," says Stoner on June 8, "and construction will begin immediately." Stay tuned.&#8211;<em>Lisa Provence<br /></em></p>
<p><em><br /></em></p>
<h3><strong>Brooks brother: Mark rebounds after the fatal roll</strong></h3>
<p>Filled with beer cans and 64 men from the University of Virginia, the windowless vehicle approached a sharp turn as it neared its Lynchburg destination. The human cargo shifted, the driver lost control, and two lives were lost.<br /><br />In 2007, the <em>Hook</em> told what happened in the 1982 "fraternity roll," <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/81253/cover-fatal-roll-1982-fraternity-crash-still-affecting-lives">a story</a> which earned the Virginia Press Association's top in-depth reporting award and which appears to have provoked the installation of a commemorative plaque inside the Sigma Chi house, the sponsoring fraternity.<br /><br /><span class="fid14496 imagecache-300px_wide"><img title="Several months after the 25th anniversary, Brooks visits the Sigma Chi house." src="http://www.readthehook.com/files/imagecache/300px_wide/images/field_images/cover-whatever-MarkBrooks.jpg" /><span class="caption">Several months after the 25th anniversary, Brooks visits the Sigma Chi house.</span></span> The 25th anniversary also helped bring some closure for Mark Brooks, a Maryland man, one of the most seriously injured passengers in the back of that U-Haul truck. Like at least two others injured on the night of October 6, 1982, Brooks quietly endured a traumatic brain injury.<br /><br />"When he came back to college," says friend and former UVA basketball star Tim Mullen, "it was clear he had a long way to go."<br /><br />Brooks, the son of a National Institutes of Health researcher and a school psychologist, was accustomed to earning As and Bs. Instead, he relates how he ended up dropping out of UVA and moving back to Maryland. Friends disappeared, women retreated, jobs were gained and lost.<br /><br />He says his last days at UVA were marked by so many inappropriate comments to attractive females that there was talk about throwing him out of Sigma Chi. "You have to behave pretty badly to get kicked out of a fraternity," notes the now 47-year-old Brooks, who wants others to understand.</p>
<p>"It's the kind of injury," says Brooks, "where you don't see the crutch."<br /><br />With military men and women coming home from the Mideast with similar life-altering injuries, Brooks recently testified on Capital Hill about a possible connection to epilepsy, a condition he now suffers. Brooks spoke June 28 to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, but he also has a message for anyone who encounters a brain-injured person.<br /><br />"Someone may seem drunk, lost, or stupid," says Brooks. "But don't assume they're drunk, lost, or stupid. They might have gotten whacked in the head."&#8211;<em>Hawes Spencer</em></p>
<p><em><br /></em></p>
<h3><strong>Trading up: Trade Center steel to mark dark day</strong></h3>
<p>Charlottesville may not have been at <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/79838/cover-bearing-witness-local-couple-lived-911-close">the center of 9/11</a>, but the nation-rocking tragedy had local impact including the 99th-floor World Trade Center death of the sister of a Burley Middle School teacher. And thanks to the efforts of the Charlottesville Fire Department and some willing donors, there will soon be a memorial to the 343 firefighters who died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.<br /><br />On January 27 of this year, in a solemn ceremony at the main fire station on Ridge Street, Charlottesville firefighters took delivery of a two-ton, 17-foot-long chunk of steel from the fallen Trade Center. Inscribed upon the mangled beam were three marks of "FDNY," each showing that the remains of a firefighter had been recovered nearby, according to Charlottesville Fire Chief Charles Werner.<br /><br /><span class="fid14448 imagecache-300px_wide"><img title="Trade Center steel arrives at the main fire station January 27." src="http://www.readthehook.com/files/imagecache/300px_wide/images/field_images/Cover-delivery911tradeCente.jpg" /><span class="caption">Trade Center steel arrives at the main fire station January 27.</span></span> Werner says that with requests for the Trade Center steel outpacing the supply, Charlottesville was fortunate that The September 11th Families Association and the New York Port Authority approved the plan to create a permanent memorial in the foyer of the planned Fontaine Avenue Fire Station.<br /><br />The City of Charlottesville has $8.75 million currently budgeted to build the new fire house at 2408 Fontaine Avenue, next to the Amoco station and at the site of the now-demolished building that once housed a restaurant called the China Seafood Hut.<br /><br />Werner, pointing out that all the expenses of creating the memorial will come from donors, credits construction company Barton Malow for donating personnel and equipment valued at $7,500 to transport the steel to Charlottesville and says that he's actively fundraising to reach a $100,000 goal.<br /><br />"What we want the steel to represent is patriotism and preparedness," says Werner, "and a chance to educate all our generations about tolerance and working together toward community resilience."&#8211;<em>Hawes Spencer</em></p>
<p><br /><em>&nbsp;</em></p>
<h3><strong>Clinosaurus rex: King Cline still shaking up Shenandoah</strong></h3>
<p>When <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/files/old/stories/2004/07/22/coverDinomightprofessorCli.html">peering in on Mark Cline in the summer of 2004</a>, the Hook called him the "Barnum of the Blue Ridge" for bringing mirthful terror to the Shenandoah Valley, particularly for antic roadside attractions around Natural Bridge. Seven years later, Cline's still at it with new ideas and new antics.<br /><br />This is the guy who built Foamhenge and a haunted house that's been celebrated at <a href="http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/9210">roadsideamerica.com</a>; and when we visited he'd just peppered the town of Glasgow with fiberglass dinosaurs.<br /><br /><span class="fid14498 imagecache-300px_wide"><img title="A trio reacts to one of Cline's dino-creations; inset: Cline's plan for an old Waynesboro building." src="http://www.readthehook.com/files/imagecache/300px_wide/images/field_images/cover-whatever-cline-Dinosa.jpg" /><span class="caption">A trio reacts to one of Cline's dino-creations; inset: Cline's plan for an old Waynesboro building.</span></span> "We moved out of Glasgow and created Dinosaur Kingdom with them," says Cline, a man whose artistic skills may be matched only by his mastery at repurposing. He took those giant dinosaurs, cast some terrorized Union soldiers, and with <a href="http://www.monstersanddinosaurs.com/">his talent for mixing camp and terror</a>, created some Civil War scenes that somehow got omitted from traditional history books.<br /><br />This is the guy who once created near-panic with a set of allegedly crashed flying saucers (crafted from 1980s-era satellite dishes) by a heavily traveled roadside. Lately, though, he's presented some serious ideas.<br /><br />For instance, just a few years ago he raised money for charity by climbing up a ladder to make a mold of the famous George Washington initials carved into the stone cliff adjoining the actual Natural Bridge. More recently, he spotted an old Waynesboro industrial building whose twin shafts&#8211; once they get the Cline treatment&#8211; will resemble the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center for a 10-year commemoration he'd like to orchestrate this fall.<br /><br />It's not all structures. Four years after winning a Hook-sponsored Mick Jagger lookalike contest, Mark dubbed himself "Marci" and appeared for his 25-year Waynesboro High School reunion wearing makeup and drag. "I had the whole group snowed for two hours," he says, "thinking I had undergone a sex change."&#8211;<em>Hawes Spencer</em></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>New gig: Perriello gets worlds away</strong></h3>
<p>A year ago, <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/82854/cover-out-nowhere-how-tom-perriellos-450-mile-election-day-made-difference-race-congress">Tom Perriello</a> was campaigning like crazy to hold onto his 5th District congressional seat, but even a presidential visit by Barack Obama wasn't enough to keep the freshman congressman in office.<br /><br /><span class="imagecache-300px_wide"><img title="Perriello at the Pavilion with the president last October." src="http://www.readthehook.com/files/imagecache/300px_wide/images/field_images/tomperrielloandPresidentBar.jpg" /><span class="caption"></span></span>This year, Perriello has been so far from Washington that he ended in the middle of epochal change in the Middle East.<br /><br />"I was working on the Darfur peace project in Qatar when the events known as the Arab Spring began," says Perriello, momentarily back at his home base in Ivy. <br /><br />The former U.S. congressman tried to get into Egypt during the last days of President Mubarak.<br /><br />"I was detained, interrogated, and kicked out of the country," says Perriello. "It was unpleasant, but I wasn't threatened."<br /><br />Still, the treatment left him wondering that if that can happen to him, who knows what was going on with Egyptian citizens. Now he's trying to support those momentous events springing from democratic uprisings, and more importantly, he says, to understand them.<br /><br />Since leaving office, he's gone back to trying to resolve conflict in strife-torn areas, which he did before what some consider his long-shot win against six-termer Virgil Goode.<br /><br />A lot of his work he does independently in places like Jordan, Egypt, and Qatar. He's also affiliated with a U.S. State Department-funded agency called the National Democratic Institute, which he describes as having a "democracy-building agenda."<br /><br />When Perriello ran for Congress, one of his objectives was to reach a position to change U.S. policy. Now that he's been there and done that, he's seen just how difficult it is to operate from inside the House of Representatives, a system he calls both "rigged" and filled with "a lot of stagnation."<br /><br />At the moment, politics are not on his horizon, but 36-year-old says he still believes in public service and problem-solving.<br /><br />"I don't miss the day-to-day in Congress," he says, "but it was an incredible honor to represent the people of the 5th District." And for right now, says Perriello, "It's been fun for me to get as far away from Washington as possible."&#8211;<em>Lisa Provence</em></p>
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<h3><strong>Why they worship: C'ville psych pegs God as by-product</strong></h3>
<p>It was one of the <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/files/old/stories/2004/09/30/coverWhyTheyKillMaleBondin.html">hotter stories in <em>Hook</em> history</a>. A psychiatrist explained how devout men can commit atrocities like the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Since the September 2004 publication of that theory as "Why They Kill," J. Anderson "Andy" Thomson has gotten even more eager to explain a dangerous nexus between testosterone and religion. He's combined the latest research into one little book purporting to explain a larger issue: why humans develop religious beliefs.<br /><br /><span class="fid14500 imagecache-300px_wide"><img title="Thomson's speech to the American Atheists now has over 341,000 views on YouTube." src="http://www.readthehook.com/files/imagecache/300px_wide/images/field_images/cover-whatever-AndyThomson.jpg" /><span class="caption">Thomson's speech to the American Atheists now has over 341,000 views on YouTube.</span></span> "I was waiting to see if one of the science writers would do it," says Thomson, "but nobody did. So I thought I'd give it a try."<br /><br />With assistance from Clare Aukofer, <em>Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith</em> was published this month by Pitchstone and sells for $12.95, a price-point that's part of Thomson's reach for a mass audience.<br /><br />No stranger to mass audiences, he gave the 2009 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iMmvu9eMrg">keynote speech</a> at the American Atheist convention in Atlanta with over 340,000 views on YouTube.<br /><br />Thomson says his religious interest launched nearly 10 years ago during the destruction of the World Trade Center, when his adult son was inside an adjacent building. Realizing how close his family had come to tragedy, he began researching when he wasn't working for UVA student health, for Region Ten Community Services Board, and in his own private practice.<br /><br />What he found was a slew of advances in the cognitive neurosciences. Anyone hoping, however, to find a single gene or brain zone for religion will be disappointed by Thomson's 144-page paperback. Just as the now-troublesome human craving for fats and sugars grew from ancient cravings for scarce nutrition, so too, says Thomson, has religion arisen, as an evolutionary by-product.<br /><br />One of the simplest religious predecessors is parental attachment, which shielded humans and other primates from childhood dangers.<br /><br />"Attachments glue us to parents, and religion gives us a super-parent," says Thomson, noting that there's more to it than that.<br /><br />The book must have gotten its science right, as it carries a foreword by Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, one of the landmarks in evolutionary biology.<br /><br />"It's easy to understand," says Thomson, "and you don't need any specialty knowledge."&#8211;<em>Hawes Spencer</em></p>
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<h3><strong>Lightweight: Kuttner's car gains traction</strong></h3>
<p>It's been nine months since Oliver Kuttner and his Edison2 team <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/84367/cover-can-car-save-world-oliver-kuttners-betting-it">collected $5 million in the Progressive Automotive X-Prize</a>, and while Kuttner says that money's "long gone," the future of the Very Light Car&#8211; the only four-seater to meet the contest's stringent demands of getting 100 mpg with a 200-mile range&#8211; is just revving up.<br />"There's a lot going on," says Kuttner in early June, a day before he leaves to speak at a Detroit convention of auto industry bigwigs.<br /><br /><span class="fid14501 imagecache-300px_wide"><img title="Engineer/driver Brad Jaeger holds a scale model of the VLC version 4.0." src="http://www.readthehook.com/files/imagecache/300px_wide/images/field_images/cover-whateverhappened-edis.jpg" /><span class="caption">Engineer/driver Brad Jaeger holds a scale model of the VLC version 4.0.</span></span> Since the victory, Kuttner and his team, including automotive engineer Ron Mathis and engineer/racecar driver Brad Jaeger&#8211; have been tag-teaming it around the globe, speaking to multinational corporations including the German petrochemical firm Bayer and manufacturer Siemans, government agencies including NASA, and at conventions, seeking partnerships and possible purchasers of a future generation of Very Light Car.<br /><br />"We are starting to be regarded as world champions in mass reductions," says Kuttner, who notes that early safety tests are showing great promise that the VLC&#8211; which as a prototype weighed in at under 750 pounds&#8211; can keep passengers safe while conserving fuel.<br /><br />Kuttner has long maintained that the vehicle's bullet shape and far-flung wheel-base would absorb impact, making the vehicle among the safest on the road.<br /><br />"It's not theoretical anymore," he says. "We have data."<br /><br />Currently, Kuttner says, there are several new models&#8211; dubbed "4.0"&#8211; undergoing testing. Recognizable as the Very Light Car, there are noticeable changes including the addition of bumpers&#8211; required by law&#8211; as well as airbags.</p>
<p>While several quarter-scale models exist&#8211; as does an electric version of the VLC&#8211; Kuttner says it'll be a while before the Very Light Car becomes a regular sight on roads around the world&#8211; and he's still looking for investors to help make it happen.<br /><br />"We're just step by step working our way toward this car that we believe is going to change the industry," he says. "And we're not the only people who think it."&#8211;<em>Courteney Stuart</em></p>
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<h3><strong>New ice age: Main Street Arena scores a profit</strong></h3>
<p>Could he make it profitable? That was the question on many minds when Mark Brown stepped up to <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/67448/hockey-hero-local-man-saves-ice-park">purchase the struggling Charlottesville Ice Park</a> last summer. After all, both sets of former owners&#8211; originally Lee Danielson and Colin Rolph, then Roberta and Bruce Williamson&#8211; had publicly revealed their own difficulties turning ice into money. But a year after Brown took the purchasing plunge&#8211; paying $3 million for the facility&#8211; he says the question's been answered with a resounding "yes."<br /><br /><span class="fid14502 imagecache-300px_wide"><img title="Diverse events including roller derbies are helping make the Main Street Arena profitable. " src="http://www.readthehook.com/files/imagecache/300px_wide/images/field_images/news-arena-rollerDerby.jpg" /><span class="caption">Diverse events including roller derbies are helping make the Main Street Arena profitable.
</span></span> "Everything's been going great," says Brown, who renamed the ice park The Main Street Arena to help bolster its new image as a multi-use facility.<br /><br />In the first months, Brown purchased and installed a removable floor, renovated the cafe area and gave up the leased office space in the building next door&#8211; an unnecessary drain on coffers, he explained. Then he set about booking events.<br /><br />Among those hosted over the past year are a high-end antique show, corporate parties the Charlottesville Derby Dames, and Mixed Martial Arts fights.<br /><br />"There's really good money in MMA fighting," says Brown, who notes that last year, 1,300 people turned out&#8211; the Arena can hold 1,500&#8211; for one of the bouts.<br /><br />The year hasn't been without its glitches, of course. The most significant of these was a March mechanical failure of the coolers that caused the ice to thaw and flood the space, forcing Brown to close for a month.<br /><br />"We had insurance," says Brown, "so it should be fine."<br /><br />The latest development at the Arena is a new free Friday night country music series that kicked off June 24 with country crooner Sunny Sweeney. Though entry is free, Brown says the series will help his bottom line.<br /><br />"Beer sales is the money," says Brown, who found co-sponsors for the series in Coors Light, Jim Price Chevrolet, and Virginia Oil. <br /><br />One year in, "I feel pretty good about it," says Brown. "So much is up in the air, and you never know what tomorrow will bring. But in terms of operating it profitably, it can be done, and it has been done." &#8211;<em>Courteney Stuart</em></p>
<h3><strong>No fly zone? Geese return to Forest Lakes</strong></h3>
<p>Nearly a year after agents from the U.S. Department of Agriculture rounded up and slaughtered 90 Canada geese residing in the Forest Lakes neighborhood, citing the alleged danger the birds pose to planes taking off and landing at nearby Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Airport, at least one new feathered family has settled in. For residents upset by last year's round up, that's reason to rejoice&#8211; and worry.<br />&nbsp;<br /><span class="fid14503 imagecache-300px_wide"><img title="Forest Lakes resident Arthur Epp relaxes with his new feathered neighbors." src="http://www.readthehook.com/files/imagecache/300px_wide/images/field_images/cover-whateverhappened-fore.jpg" /><span class="caption">Forest Lakes resident Arthur Epp relaxes with his new feathered neighbors.</span></span> "Will CHO ask to have these new birds exterminated as well to satisfy their business agenda?" asks Art Epp, one of those residents who accused the airport and the FAA of using the bird round-ups as a public relations maneuver.<br /><br />As reported in the <em>Hook</em>'s <a href="Forest%20Lakes%20resident%20Arthur%20Epp%20relaxes%20with%20his%20new%20feathered%20neighbors.">September 2, 2010 cover story</a>, "Unfriendly skies: Forest Lakes, the Miracle on the Hudson and Canada Geese," there's fear that the large fowl could bring down another plane, as was the case in 2009 on the Hudson Riven when heroic pilot Chester "Sully" Sullenberger became a household name.<br /><br />But after conducting his own research on the probability of a the geese causing another catastrophic bird strike, Epp says he took a dim view of the round-ups that are occurring near airports around the country.<br /><br />"I believe the probability of someone dying in the Forest Lakes' pools due to accidental drowning or on the Forest Lakes soccer fields due to a lightning strike far exceeds the probability of someone dying in a birdstrike incident at CHO," says Epp.<br /><br />There is good news for the new geese families&#8211; at least for now.<br /><br />"We have not had any requests for geese round-ups," says Scott Barras, state director for the USDA's wildlife services program. While Barras says that could change in the next few weeks&#8211; as round-ups are typically conducted mid-summer when the birds molt and cannot fly&#8211; David Shifflett, president of the Forest Lakes Neighborhood Association, says the association hasn't received any notice from the airport, and according to CHO director Barbara Hutchinson, the airport doesn't plan to make any such requests, and that pleases Epp.<br /><br />"A new, peaceful vibrancy exists," he says. "Once again, the lake feels alive."&#8211;<em>Courteney Stuart</em></p>
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<h3><strong>Morgan's memory: Harringtons keep case alive</strong></h3>
<p>When your daughter's been murdered and nearly two years pass without an arrest, the frustration of waiting for a break in the case compounds devastating grief. For Dan and Gil Harrington, <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/65546/familial-pain-harringtons-press-police-controversial-dna-test">parents of slain Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington</a>, the pain is mitigated&#8211; at least slightly&#8211; by taking action to help others.<br /><br /><img class="imagecache-300px_wide" src="http://www.readthehook.com/files/imagecache/300px_wide/images/field_images/cover-whateverhappened-harr.jpg" />On Saturday, June 11, the Harringtons joined a group of supporters in front of the Giant food store on Pantops for a bake sale to raise funds for the Morgan Dana Harrington Educational Wing of a school in the African nation of Zambia, where Gil Harrington visits annually through the nonprofit OMNI, Orphan Medical Network International.<br /><br />"In two weeks, 15 of us saw 3,077 patients," says Gil, a nurse, of her most recent trip in April, describing the almost unimaginably bleak living conditions of villagers who live around the school. Among the conditions that Gil and her OMNI colleagues treat are tropical ulcers&#8211; infections that cause large open wounds that, without even basic first aid like band-aids, can remain open for years. Also common, Gil reports, are severe burns&#8211; particularly in children, who've fallen into the open fires used for cooking.<br /><br />She holds a picture of a young boy with second and third degree burns over much of his face, and recalls struggling to find a way to cover his wound. Eventually, a small piece of fleece, fashioned into a ski-mask-style hat, offered some protection from the ubiquitous flies that carry infection and can lay eggs in open wounds.<br /><br />It's far from a perfect solution, she acknowledges, but in third-world conditions, it's better than the alternative: nothing&#8211; and the actual medical treatment may not have the most impact.<br /><br />"The compassion is maybe what lasts," she muses, describing the delight shown by an 80-year-old man who received his first pair of shoes.<br /><br />While the fundraising goal to finish the wing is $15,000, both Gil and Dan say their presence at the Giant bake sale has less to do with raising money than with memory.<br /><br />"It's important to maintain a level of awareness in the community," says Dan Harrington, mentioning the incoming crop of UVA First Years who may never have heard Morgan's name or the story of how she disappeared from outside a Metallica concert at John Paul Jones Arena on October 17, 2009 and how her remains were discovered three months later on a remote Albemarle County farm.<br /><br />"They don't know that there's a killer still in this community," he says.<br /><br />In addition to making continued appearances in Charlottesville, the Harringtons say they're continuing to push for a national DNA database to further enable familial DNA searches and will continue to support a proposed bill at the state level that would require campus police to hand murder cases over to local authorities.&#8211;<em>Courteney Stuart</em></p>
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<p><em><strong>Corrections:</strong><br /></em>• The rental truck company, U-Haul, was misspelled in the print edition of this story. It has been corrected in this archived online edition.</p>
<p>• Andy Thomson's book is entitled <em>Why We Believe in God(s), </em>not<em> Why We Believe in the God(s).</em> It has been corrected in this archived online edition.<em>&nbsp;</em></p>
<p><em>•</em> Frank Stoner is still involved with the rehab of Jefferson School, but he's now with Milestone Partners LLC, not Stonehaus, as originally reported.</p>
http://www.readthehook.com/98505/whatever-happened-10-updated-stories#comments_BreakingNewsFeaturedCommunityfatal rollForest Lakesjefferson schoolMain Street ArenaMorgan HarringtonOliver Kuttnerprofessor clinetom perriellowhy they killCover StoriesWed, 29 Jun 2011 14:00:05 +0000hawes98505 at http://www.readthehook.com